This is the owner's manual for one of the first pavilions Dragonwing made. It was produced from 1987 to 1991, in a "fabric only" configuration. The manual is included on this web site mostly for historical reasons, although I made a few of them and I'm confident that at least some of them (particularly the ones made of Pyrotone or Fyrecoat) are still functional.

The description of the frame may be of interest to those who are looking for ways to eliminate the center pole from their tents. The "strut frame" was very workable, but it was heavy, so all my own tents that were equipped with this frame were later retrofitted to a center pole and ring system. This strut system can be described as an early version of what is now called a hub-and-spoke system. That system, which was refined by Past Tents in England and now used by many manufacturers, appears to have been developed totally independently from the Dragonwing strut system.

It should be noted that when Dragonwing began to produce complete tents, it redesigned the guying system to eliminate half the ropes without compromising stability, because the new system worked well with the ring that came standard with the frame. It also worked well with the hub-and-spoke system introduced in 2002. Details on this improved arrangement can be found in the owner's manuals produced after 1996.